Obama, Farrakhan share
cover of Wright's monthly

Trumpet magazine cover titled "The legacy lives on," includes Obama and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan

JERUSALEM – Sen. Barack Obama's face several times graced the cover of an anti-American magazine run by his longtime pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., appearing on one issue alongside Nation of Islam chief Louis Farrakhan.

Issues of Wright's Trumpet magazine reportedly have suggested America was guilty of genocide in Africa, decried the Fourth of July as the "national holiday of the dominant culture," referred to America as a "diaspora" for blacks, repudiated American patriotism and entertained suggestions the Bush administration knew about the 9-11 attacks before they were carried out.

"It seems inconceivable that, in 20 years, Obama would never have picked up a copy of Trumpet," writes Stanley Kurtz in a lengthy Weekly Standard expose of Wright's magazine. "Obama himself graced the cover. ... There can be no mistaking it. What did Barack Obama know and when did he know it? Everything. Always."

The business-oriented blog Bizzyblog found three cover images of Obama. One featured the Illinois senator and Wright shaking hands.

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Another was a montage of faces – black leaders, past and present, with the title "The legacy lives on" – that included Wright, Farrakhan, Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad, Rosa Parks and even O.J. Simpson attorney Johnny Cochran.

"Notice who's missing? Martin Luther King, Jr," noted the Little Green Footballs blog.

The Obama campaign did not immediately return a WND request for comment about whether the senator read any issues of Trumpet or was aware his face was featured on several of the magazine's covers, including once with Farrakhan.

Wright, who recently transitioned from senior pastor to pastor emeritus of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, founded Trumpet magazine and serves as the publication's CEO, with his daughter, Jeri, in the position of publisher/editor-in-chief. Trumpet went national in 2006 and reportedly has a readership larger than 100,000.

"Glance through even a single issue of Trumpet, and Wright's radical politics are everywhere – in the pictures, the headlines, the highlighted quotations and above all in the articles themselves," writes Kurtz, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

Kurtz went through a year's worth of Trumpet issues and said he found in the 2006 archives that controversial views expressed by Wright in sound bites from his sermons were reinforced in detail throughout the magazine.

Many of Wright's defenders have claimed some of the pastor's anti-American, anti-Israel, black supremacist statements were taken out of context.

Obama, who has regarded Wright as a spiritual adviser, has stated a number of times he was not aware of some of Wright's ideology during his two decades as a member of Trinity United Church of Christ.

"Obama must have long been aware of his pastor's political radicalism," writes Kurtz. "A careful reading of nearly a year's worth of Trumpet Newsmagazine makes it next to impossible to conclude otherwise."

Kurtz points to Obama's expressed outrage after last month's National Press Club address when Wright defended Farrakhan and praised him as "one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st century ... that's what I think about him."

Aside from appearing on a cover of Wright's magazine alongside Obama, Farrakhan's face was also on the cover of a special November/December 2007 double issue announcing Wright's Empowerment Award, which had been given that year to the Nation of Islam head. The magazine also praised Farrakhan as a 20th- and 21st-century "giant."

Trumpet magazine cover with Barack Obama and his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.

Kurtz writes Trumpet preaches a black liberation theology, typically referring to American blacks as "Africans living in the Western Diaspora." The magazine opposes black "assimilation." Articles have expressed displeasure with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and former Secretary of State Colin Powell.

The magazine in which Obama was repeatedly featured abhors American patriotism.

"Columbus Day is a day of rage for Wright. Calling Columbus a racist slave trader, Wright excoriates the holiday as 'a national act of amnesia and denial,' part of the 'sick and myopic arrogance called Western History,'" notes Kurtz.

Trumpet featured an article by Wright that claimed America actually was discovered by Africans, citing as evidence a book that has been largely discredited.

The July 2006 issue of Trumpet slams the Fourth of July as "the national holiday of the dominant culture."

Kurtz notes that issue featured an article by a Rev. Reginald Williams Jr. that called July 4th "nothing more than a day off work and a time for some good barbeque to the millions of African Americans who suffer and have suffered under the policies of this government and this country."

One issue of Trumpet defended former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney's claim the Bush administration was aware of the 9/11 plot before it was carried out.

A column in the magazine, titled, "The Beloved Cynthia McKinney," complains McKinney was "tarred and feathered in the press" for raising questions about possible government foreknowledge of 9/11, Kurtz found.

That column stated the "crimes of 9/11" are "not only unsolved, but covered up by both Democrats and Republicans."

A central theme of Trumpet apparently is that the U.S. is a racist, criminal country.

"Do you see God as a God who approves of Americans taking other people's countries? Taking other people's women? Raping teenage girls and calling it love (as in Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings)?" rages one article discovered by Kurtz.

Another blames Africa's problems on the U.S. and the West, claiming they are withholding aid. Screams one piece: "Some analysts would go so far as to even call what [the United States, the G-8, and multinational corporations] are doing [in Africa] genocide!"

Kurtz is convinced Obama realized Wright's ideology long ago.

"It is simply inconceivable that in 20 years' time someone as sharp as Obama did not grasp the intensely political themes repeated in so much of what Wright says and does," he writes.

 

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